Maurice Mason – farmer, plant hunter and friend to the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland

Dennis G Mcnally

doi:10.24823/sibbaldia.2020.303

Abstract

Maurice Mason is well documented as an accomplished amateur horticulturist and plant collector. His contributions to horticulture were recognised by his guest attendance at the Kew Guild Annual Dinner in 1960 and the award of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Victoria Medal of Honour in the same year. He was generous in sharing his plant collections, and this generosity extended to Ireland. His less well-known contribution to Irish horticulture through the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin is outlined here.

Highlights

Leonard Maurice Mason (Fig. 1) was born in 1921 to a farming family in the rural village of Fincham in Norfolk
Maurice Mason inherited his love of plants from his mother and grandmother and began gardening at the age of four, so by his 21st birthday, when Talbot Manor passed to him, he was well enough trained to be able to create his first garden
The author of this paper spent his horticultural career at the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin and became curious about Maurice Mason when he was tasked with management of the Stove Collection in the Curvilinear Range of Glasshouses in the late 1970s (Fig. 3)

Summary

Introduction

Leonard Maurice Mason (Fig. 1) was born in 1921 to a farming family in the rural village of Fincham in Norfolk. The family had worked the land of their estate, Talbot Manor, for more than 200 years. Maurice Mason inherited his love of plants from His mother and grandmother and began gardening at the age of four, so by his 21st birthday, when Talbot Manor passed to him, he was well enough trained to be able to create his first garden. The Talbot Manor garden already had extensive collections of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, and, with Mason’s passion for both hardy and tender plants, by 1982 it covered 32 acres (12.5 ha) and contained glasshouses to hold his tropical and sub-tropical plant collections (Fig. 2). The author of this paper spent his horticultural career at the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin and became curious about Maurice Mason when he was tasked with management of the Stove Collection in the Curvilinear Range of Glasshouses in the late 1970s (Fig. 3). Mason’s name was prominent, and began a long-term documentation of the relationship between Maurice Mason and Glasnevin

Mason and Glasnevin

Another interesting link between Glasnevin and the plant collections at

The collections at Glasnevin after Mason